A few weeks ago a good friend of mine uploaded her daughter gymnastics floor routine on Facebook and asked for judges to explain her deductions. At first the judges were very helpful and gave a skill by skill explanation of the deductions and what she can do to improve her score. My friend was excited and so she tried to upload another video of her daughter’s beam routine. She commented to the judges and said, “Thank you so much for your help, here is my daughter’s beam routine.” Immediately she was told that they would not help anymore. They told her that they thought she was a coach and they would not give deductions for a parent. When they found out that she was a mother they stopped all communications and asked her to leave the group.
My friend felt terrible. She couldn’t understand what she had done and called me for my advice.
Since I understand the life of a judge, coach, and athlete I told her that judges don’t want to interfere with the coach/athlete relationship and that it is almost taboo to have parents talk to judges. She was still confused.
I asked her the apparently deep and pondering question, “Why do you want to know your child’s deductions?” She paused for a while and then said, “I just want to be educated.” It sounded like a fine answer to me, I like most moms want to be involved in my kids sports. I like to know what they need to improve on, what knew skills they are working on, what challenges they have during practice, and what defines a successful routine. I too like to be educated.
I decided to call up my good friend and owner of Growing Champions for Life, David Benzel.
I explained the entire situation to David and after I was done with my long monologue and telling him my thoughts, he simply asked me the question again,”Why does she need to know her child’s deductions?” I replied, “She just wanted to be educated.” David, being the wise man that he is then asked, “What is she going to DO with the information?”
And there it was.
It wasn’t giving the information that scared the judges enough to run and hide, it was what she would do with that information. What was her intent? Was she just going to learn the deductions and corrections and keep them in her head, or was she going to use it for something more devious?
Of course my friend had no intention to use this info, but other parents may not have the same intentions. And that is why the judges freaked out.
With this information would they go to the coach and tell the coach what he needed to do to help their own daughter improve? With this information would they stand in the parent section barking out corrections. With this information would they beat their child over the head with things they needed to fix? Would they make their child practice at home? Would they pretend that they knew more than the coaches? The judges weren’t going to take that chance.
So how do we parents educate ourselves on our child’s sport without crossing the line? The best I can give you is that it is our child’s sport. Our job as parents is to understand the basic concepts of the sport. But when it comes to the technical stuff, that is the job of the coaches and so it is best if we leave it up to them.
I do believe our children are told time and time again by the coach what to work on. I am pretty sure that our children already know what they being deducted on. And I am also confident that the coach is well aware of all the skills they need to work on.
I know it is frustrating as a parent to sit back and have to watch your child suffer through a competition season, but that is our job as parents. We have to leave the coaching up to the coaches and the judging up to the judges. And we parents will take care of everything else.
If this was really true then why would USAG put out a iPad app that explains all the deduction? I paid the $30 or whatever the app costs so that I could be educated because so many times as a parent you sit in the stands and your kids routine looks as good as the one before and after it but your child’s score is a point lower and you just want to know because you begin to feel there is some great conspiracy against your kid or your gym or that the whole thing is just subjective as shit. Knowledge is power. I have had that App since USAG offered it when the new compulsory routines came out. I get asked all the time at practice and meets by other parents to look at it. If USAG isn’t afraid of parents understanding, why would judges be?
Yes my daughters coach does tell her what she should work on but she is 10. Sometimes she honestly doesn’t understand until she SEES the video I shoot and has it spelled out to her. She “thinks” she is doing it right. Our coach doesn’t have time to sit down with each girl and do game film from every meet. So a nice solution would be if judges would offer to give deductions for routine videos as a consulting service and charge for it. We hire choreographers to create routines for our kids. Why not hire a judge to evaluate it outside of a competition setting. I think it could be very valuable and something parents are willing to pay for.
Thank you for your reply. The app is mostly for coaches although it is available for anyone. Trust me, as a parent I too am very interested in understanding the scoring system. The hard part as a parent is what is our role? If you are using the app for your knowledge only, then I see no harm.
As a coach, I have had parents come up to me to consult with me about their children’s routines and how I can help them fix their deductions. All of which I already know and work on. What I did like was when parents gave me the videos and we scheduled time to go over the routines with the athletes. I would sit down with the athlete alone and go over deductions. Videoing is important for the athletes to see what they are doing right and wrong, but again the coach should be the one coaching.
Many gyms do have judges come in to evaluate the gymnasts. The evaluations are rarely sent home. They are given to the coach. If your gym doesn’t, there are also compulsory clinics around that will do evaluations during summer.
As far as having a business for judges evaluate routines, I am sure that could be a great money maker. But then again what would the parents do with this info?
I guess the underlining topic of this article was what is the intent of the parent and making sure not to ruin the parent/child relationship.
As parents we want to help as much as we can. If parents trust the coach, then we need to leave it up to them.